Monday, March 1, 2010

Musings: Legislative Updates

The full moon was on the run from clouds when Koko and I went out last night, and by morning it was evident, from the thick layer of gray, that she had been caught, her brilliance extinguished.

Wind whipped through the tops of ironwood, camphor and eucalyptus trees, sending small twigs, and not so small branches, hurtling down onto the road as we walked. Every now and then, a smattering of rain brushed past my face, the only part of my body — save for one hand that held Koko’s leash — exposed to the chill.

March has come in like a lion, as is typically the case. What’s eerie is that the winter winds are accompanied by a fire alert in some areas that have been sucked dry by the drought.

Meanwhile, the surfers are getting some action this season, with one big winter swell after another knocking back some of the vegetation illegally planted along the shoreline.

Now the Lege is moving on that issue, too, with the House Finance Committee passing an amended version of HB 1808, which gives the Department of Land and Natural Resources the authority to require landowners to remove vegetation that encroaches on the public beach, which is likened to a public sidewalk. If they don’t, DLNR can either fine them or rip out the offending naupaka and spider lilies itself.

Interestingly, the bill, which was introduced by our own Rep. Mina Morita, among others, also amends the Hawaii Revised Statutes to define shoreline as:

""Shoreline" means the upper reaches of the wash of the waves, other than storm and seismic waves, at high tide during the season of the year in which the highest wash of the waves occurs, usually evidenced by the edge of natural vegetation growth, [or] but never lower than the upper limit of debris left by the wash of the waves."

The bill now moves to the Senate, where the Judiciary Committee passed the marijuana decriminalization bill after amending it to up the penalty from $100 to $300 for a first offense and $500 for every violation thereafter. Ouch.

While the bill is a step in the right direction, it’s kind of bizarre to see language like “one ounce or less of marijuana shall not be deemed a detrimental drug.” It seems to me that a substance — I don’t define marijuana as a drug — is either detrimental or it’s not. The quantity shouldn’t matter. And since cannabis has never killed anybody, it’s hard to see why it should be labeled detrimental at all.

The “compassion center” bill — aka medical cannabis dispensary — is also moving along, although it was amended to include a $5,000 registration fee for each facility, with the state and county splitting the money. It looks like it’s all about maximizing revenue this session.

It’s kind of hard to believe that folks actually need to face tougher sanctions to deter them from killing endangered creatures, but unfortunately, that’s where we’re at. Still, it all comes down to enforcement. I mean, just look at the luxurious St. Regis, whose lights kill more endangered Newell’s shearwaters and petrels than any other place in Hawaii each year. (KIUC kills the most with its power lines.) And why? Because the feds and state haven’t taken any enforcement action to make them stop.

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Scientists at the heart of the Climategate row were yesterday accused by a leading academic body of undermining science's credibility.

The Institute of Physics said 'worrying implications' had been raised after it was revealed the University of East Anglia had manipulated data on global warming.

The rebuke - the strongest yet from the scientific community - came as Professor Phil Jones, the researcher at the heart of the scandal, told MPs he had written 'some pretty awful emails' - but denied trying to suppress data.

The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered when a hacker stole hundreds of emails sent from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

They revealed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests from climate change sceptics.

Some even appeared to show the researchers discussing how to manipulate raw data from tree rings about historical temperatures.

In one, Professor Jones talks about using a 'trick' to massage figures and 'hide the decline'.

John McGrath of the Queensland Brain Institute in Australia studied more than 3,801 men and women born between 1981 and 1984 and followed them up after 21 years to ask about their cannabis use and assessed them for psychotic episodes. Around 18 percent reported using cannabis for three or fewer years, 16 percent for four to five years and 14 percent for six or more years. For most of the study, researchers didn't measure the frequency of cannabis use among subjects, but rather whether they used at all.

"Compared with those who had never used cannabis, young adults who had six or more years since first use of cannabis were twice as likely to develop a non-affective psychosis (such as schizophrenia)," McGrath wrote in a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry journal.

They were also four times as likely to have high scores in clinical tests of delusion, he wrote, and a so-called "dose-response" relationship showed that the longer the duration since first cannabis use, the higher the risk of psychosis-related symptoms.

(AP) -- Marijuana smoke has joined tobacco smoke and hundreds of other chemicals on a list of substances California regulators say cause cancer.

The ruling Friday by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment likely will force pot shops with 10 or more employees to post warnings. Final guidelines are expected by the time warning requirements take effect in a year.

The listing only applies to marijuana smoke, not the plant itself.

Spokesman Sam Delson says the state agency found marijuana smoke contains 33 of the same harmful chemicals as tobacco smoke.

Delson says the findings came from a review of more than 30 scientific papers.